E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS AM AGENDA
WEDNESDAY, 22 APRIL 2020

SUBJECTS: RBA Governor speech, need for up to date budget numbers, early access to superannuation, Andrew Bragg; oil prices.  

ANNELISE NIELSEN, HOST: Welcome back. Joining us live now is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones. Thank you for your time.

STEPHEN JONES, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good to be with you.

NIELSEN: Now the RBA Governor gave a pretty extraordinary speech yesterday, flagging the need for a serious structural tax reform to deal with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Do you think that we would be looking at some pretty serious company tax cuts to get us out of the budget hole?

JONES: Let's be fair and accurate to the Reserve Bank Governor. He outlined five areas of reform that were necessary, including the building and pricing of infrastructure, industrial relations, tax reform to name just a few. I think the Opposition has signalled pretty early on to the Government that we will work constructively with them across a range of these areas. If the Government wants us to treat seriously any propositions for tax reform, for tax cuts, then they're going to have to come clean on the underlying budget numbers and we've been calling for some time now for there to be an update of the budget numbers. The Government could use the forthcoming sitting of Parliament, due to be called on in a couple of weeks’ time, to update the Parliament, the Opposition and the people of Australia on what the underlying budget numbers are. There's two sides to a budget. If we're going to talk about tax cuts, we've got to understand that they're affordable and we've got to see what the underlying revenue is looking like and what the underlying outgoings are going to be as well. The Reserve Bank Governor was quite clear yesterday that under any of the scenarios that he was considering we were going to see persistently high unemployment into the out years and that is of course a drag on budget revenue as well, so we need to see the whole picture.

NIESLEN: This is a situation that still massively in flux though. We have a lot of global forces hitting our budget. Isn't there a risk that if we had a kind of budget update well before October when it's planned that it really could just be outdated very quickly?

JONES: We know that.it We will be responsible and mature about this. We know that these numbers are going to move around a bit. When the Treasurer stood up a few months ago and said that the budget was in black and on track that was wildly optimistic when the head winds were quite clear. We know that these numbers are going to move around but if they want us to consider what's currently within the budget, if they want us to consider new proposals that are going to hit the revenue side, then we’ve at least got to have a clear understanding of what the underlying numbers are. Let's not forget there's already thirty three billion dollars’ worth of unfunded tax cuts baked into the Government's legislative agenda, that's the third round of individual tax cuts. If we're going to be asked to consider more tax cuts that are going to have a big impact on revenue then we need to understand whether they're going to be affordable.

NIELSEN: One of the interesting updates we've been given this morning is about the number of people registering for early access to superannuation. We understand as 313,000 accessing, that total cost is 2.7 billion. The Treasury forecast was initially much lower than that, I think it was 1.4 billion, sorry 1.75 billion. Do you think this is a concern that it is already much higher than the Government predicted?

JONES: I think to the extent that the Government did any modelling on this at all, it was woefully inadequate. I think the numbers are going to far exceed that which the Government announced when it legislated the package. Not helped, I might say, by certain Liberal Party members circulating material to their electors and on their mailing list encouraging people, who on the face of it may not be entitled to access this scheme, to do exactly that. There's some pretty irresponsible behaviour going on from some members of the Government as well, I've got to say. That said, we will work with the Government to ensure that an initiative, which I think wasn't well thought through, is properly implemented. We want to ensure that Australians who genuinely are in hardship have access to that emergency relief. We'll work with the Government to ensure that that occurs. We do think that there are going to be some funds that are particularly hard hit by that. That includes funds within the construction industry, within the retail and hospitality industry, where due to their homogeneous membership and what's going on in their industries they are going to be significantly hard hit by that run on funds.

NIELSEN: Can you be a bit more specific on which Liberal MPs have been circulating information? What have they been telling constituents that's incorrect?

JONES: It's no secret that Senator Andrew Bragg has been running a campaign against superannuation, the industry that he once earned thousands of dollars of out of himself as a paid advocate. He's now running a one-man campaign against the industry and I've seen documents that he has circulated under his letterhead encouraging Australians to access this scheme irrespective and without any information about the eligibility criteria. Frankly, this is irresponsible, it borders on illegal because there are, as you know, legal requirements on people giving financial advice. We call on the Senator, we call on all others who are acting irresponsibly and putting other sort of advice to just check themselves a bit. We're supporting the Government in the implementation of the scheme. We think there are problems with it. Let’s make sure that it's well managed and the people who are genuinely in hardship get access to those funds and for the rest of the members of the funds, their interests are protected by ensuring that the funds remain stable and liquid and they're able to go on and continue to provide decent retirement incomes for Australians because that, after all, is there statutory purpose.

NIELSEN: That is quite an accusation, to be saying that the Liberal Senator is potentially engaging in illegal behaviour and illegally providing financial advice. Have you raised your concerns with him directly? 

JONES: I've only seen this material this morning and I'll be raising the issue through formal channels, but I just simply want to send a warning, as we have in the past to the real estate sector where we saw some improper behaviour going on there, everyone just needs to take a bit of Bex and I'll lie down on this. There is a provision in place, it will be accessed by people who genuinely needy. We will support the Government and the authorities in ensuring that that can occur, but we don't need scheme promoters. We don't need people out there giving false information, wrong information, incomplete or impartial information, which is motivated by who knows what, but surely isn't in the interest of individual members the or the economy as a whole. Let's just be a little bit responsible about the way that this stuff has been dealt with.

NIELSEN: We will contact Senator Bragg to get his response. Just finally there's been some reporting this morning about oil reserves. We have record low prices right around the world and there are questions about whether Australia should be raising its own reserves. This is something crossbench Senator Rex Patrick has pushed for quite some time. Do you think we should be looking at increasing our reserves?

JONES: I think the one thing that we can see around the world of the moment is that oil is not in short supply. What is in short supply is storage facilities and what is in short supply is demand. I've got a concern in this area, it's the fact that the record low wholesale prices are not flowing through to bowser prices for many Australians and particularly Australians in regional areas where they're playing up to 40 and 50 cents more per litre than their capital city equivalents. We need to see the Government putting some attention on this. We need the Government to put the spotlight on petrol prices to ensure that Australians who are already doing it hard aren’t hit by price gouging by certain players within certain parts of the distribution network. We want to ensure that Australians are paying not one cent more than they need to be for their petrol prices when they're already doing it tough in so many other areas.

NIELSEN: Shadow Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones, thank you for your time.

JONES: Great to be with you.

ENDS